It was fun to mock the English academics who promoted Jason Arday to various positions, but I was saddened to hear of his death:
In my view, the responsibility for this man’s death lies entirely with those who set up the racist system (“DEI”) that prevailed while he received his degrees and his academic jobs. The absurd inventions that Dr. Arday spun, e.g., running 30 marathons in 35 days, were a natural response to being in an environment set up by academic racists. We don’t blame a fish for breathing via gills. The fish doesn’t know anything different from the water in which he swims. DEI was the water in which Jason Arday was immersed for more than 20 years.
RIP.
Related… screen shots from Simon & Schuster, which supposedly fact-checked his autobiography.
A completely different perspective:
the sixth group of people defrauded by Jason Arday is the British people. Arday sat on numerous charities, boards, committees and other DEI institutions not only funded by the British taxpayer but devoted to the erasure of British culture and the demographic replacement of the British people in our homeland. To this end, Arday was awarded numerous honorary doctorates, fellowships and academic awards and given a correspondingly wide public platform to spread his message of hate and racial discrimination against White people.
Jason Arday wasn’t a fantasist or serial liar. He wasn’t a poster boy for the woke-Left or an unfairly hounded victim of the far-Right. Jason Arday was a criminal, and he chose suicide rather than face the consequences of his crimes.
As noted previously, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is ironically named for Ken Griffin, one of the most famous examples of a person abandoning Chicago during coronapanic and the peaceful BLM riots of 2020. Here’s a report on some fun stuff that is inside.
AMTRAK customers will be pleased to learn about a train that went 112 mph… in 1893… while pulling four six-axle parlor cars with passengers on board (nearly 300 tons). The machine is featured in a hall with a Spitfire chasing a Stuka, a Boeing 727, and some other fun aviation items:
The cut-away Boeing 727 engine is impressive for its sheer scale. Thanks to Pratt for explaining everything!
Of course, the signs not written by Pratt are completely wrong! They say that bypass air in turbofan engine is there primarily to reduce noise. (Bypass is primarily for thrust and results in much higher efficiency than a straight turbojet engine.) The 1964 date is also incorrect; the Boeing 727 first flew in 1963, the greatest year in the history of all possible years.
Followers of Science will be pleased to learn that quite a few young apparently healthy museum staff members are following the Science by wearing masks (July 2026):
What are the pronouns of the employee at left? “she/they”:
Although pronoun compliance is high, Scientists might be upset to see that only 4 out of 74 genders recognized by Science are depicted on a purportedly “all genders” restroom:
The Fairy Castle must be seen to be believed. It cost $500,000 in 1935, comparable to $12.3 million mini-dollars today. Built until the direction of a dollhouse-loving silent film star, Colleen Moore, the 8x8x8′ castle required 100 craftsmen and ingredients such as gold, silver, and diamonds (details). (As an example of how language changes over time, the person who built a “fairy” castle starred in a movie called “Flaming Youth”.)
What animal had to be killed to make the bearskin rug?
There are a lot of touchscreen simulation games. Here’s one that our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters up in Canada might have missed: “Use Science and Technology to Battle Fire”.
The Museum reminds us that stores in poorer neighborhoods sell Coke and potato chips not because there is no demand for broccoli, but because retailers want Americans of Color to be denied healthy food.
There’s a photo exhibit by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, photographer/author of What I Eat, but concentrating on Chicago residents. Here are some Chicagoans who might have missed the broccoli memo at the “kitchen table”. The quote from Luciano Pavarotti is odd. The guy weighed 350-400 lbs.
Speaking of wholesome foods, the Twinkie was invented right near O’Hare Airport.
You’ll pass the 7×15′ Jollyball machine towards the exit. It’s a tour through Switzerland, but built by a British jeweler named Charles Morgan:
Kenya’s homework is to pick her favorite song and share it with her class. Sounds simple, but for Kenya, it’s anything but. With all that beautiful music in the world, how can she possibly choose? Her family and friends try to help by offering their favorite songs as choices, but it’s no help to Kenya. While those around her have made some great suggestions, Kenya has a hard time calling any one of them her favorite.
For inspiration, Kenya accompanies her father to the Caribbean Cultural Center where he plays music. Kenya hears music from Cuba and Trinidad, Haiti and Puerto Rico. She hears music in all different languages—French, English, Spanish. But still, Kenya can’t decide which song she likes best. Finally, Kenya makes her decision—one that will surprise readers while inspiring them to listen to the world around them.
I asked ChatGPT to explain how this fits into a science musuem:
Kenya’s Song fits the museum’s broader institutional emphasis on children, creativity, multicultural education, and representation.
Happy National Financial Awareness Day to those who celebrate…
We had a family discussion about the possibility that even successful people might be forced to work, e.g., to pay for a child’s college expenses. “It doesn’t matter how much you earn,” I told the kids. “It is always possible to spend every last penny.” They dispute this. I cited examples of second and third homes, of first class airline tickets to Europe, of expensive cars and watches.
The very next day, I ran into a neighbor who had purchased a Porsche 911 GT3 Touring the day before (i.e., while our family discussion was occurring). “The dealer called me and said he had a white and gold one in stock,” said the new owner. “My initial thought was to reject the color, but I went over to see it and came home with it.” In other words, an impulse decision to spend $300,000(?).
(As far as I know, this purchase won’t put any financial strain on the owner, but I thought it was a funny coincidence!)
Meanwhile, any news on the 2020 Tesla Roadster? If it had been delivered as promised would the early ones already be ready for the lithium-ion scrap heap?
I know that everyone here has tickets to visit The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago (don’t forget to show ID if you want to pay the Illinois resident rate). While visiting this celebration of our greatest president, don’t forget to walk a few steps to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry and see U-505, one of only two German U-boats captured and towed away by the Allies intact during WWII.
First, why did Ken Griffin abandon Chicago due to crime and disorder and then give the museum, renamed in 2024, $125 million? The gift was in 2019 and Griffin began moving during coronapanic and the mostly peaceful BLM protests of 2020. Proving just how wrong Griffin was about crime and disorder in Chicago, the police send three officers, each with a firearms and explosives-sniffing canine, to the museum all-day every day:
The sub, launched in 1941, is enormous (251′ long):
The torpedoes are also huge and, unlike U.S. WWII torpodoes, weren’t incompetently engineered. The German torpedoes were undersea Teslas, powered by batteries, and were guided by acoustic homing.
If you want to feel better about your job, the U.S. Navy guys who forced U-505 to surface off Cape Verde raced into the sinking vessel as soon as the Germans had evacuated. They expected 12 timed explosive charges to be set and also a massive pipe letting in seawater. Their heroism is explained in Codename Nemo. A big part of the solution, after the pipe hatch was closed and the timed charges were diarmed, was to let the propellers spin while the sub was being towed. This charged the batteries and, thus, enabled the sub’s own pumps to clear out the water.
After some years in now-tax-free New Hampshire, the sub was towed past Maine on her way to Chicago and they picked up some Graham Platner campaign items:
The museum also has a good exhibit, including original artifacts, of Enigma machines.
Capturing a submarine turns out to be a great way to start a birdwatching club:
What’s it like inside? Photos from the guided (by Jessie, who was awesome!) tour:
One thing that we learned on the tour: the U.S. violated the Geneva Convention by not allowing the captured crew of U-505 to send letters back home nor notifying their relatives that U-505 had been captured rather than sunk. The Red Cross was not allowed to visit the 58 prisoners in Ruston, Louisiana. We wanted to keep the June 4, 1944 capture a secret so that the Germans wouldn’t know that we had their codebooks, etc.
Where did the museum folks get the money to build an underground bunker big enough to preserve the submarine from the Chicago weather? From a foundation established by Robert R. McCormick, founder of the Chicago Tribute and famously opposed to U.S. involvement in Europe’s second huge war within one generation. The bunker celebrating U.S. involvement in WWII is named “the McCormick Tribute Foundation Exhibition Hall.”
You can spend an entire day in this museum. I’ll write some more about it.
Loosely related… the 2020 Tom Hanks movie Greyhound, about the poor chances that Allied convoys had of crossing the North Atlantic in early 1942.
Happy “we’re still right our 2 percent annual inflation target” day to everyone from the BLS. Let’s look at part of the CPI that used to be deflationary and that is now inflationary: personal computers. June 25, 2026 invoice for 1.5 TB of RAM that my friend bought for his home PC:
The IBM PC was born with 16 KB (base) of RAM in Boca Raton 45 years ago (announced August 12, 1981). From the Boca Raton Historical Society:
In 1967 Thomas John Watson Jr., then Chairman of the Board, announced that IBM would open a large-scale manufacturing plant at Boca Raton to produce its System/360 Model 20 midsized computer. In December 1966, IBM announced its purchase of 550 acres west of what is now I95, south of Yamato Road and east of Military Trail. IBM was the first company to build an industrial site in the scrubland of the west. The original site eventually grew from 620,000 square feet to 3.6 million square feet in more than 40 buildings. The main complex was modeled after IBM’s research center located in LaGaude, France on a rugged slope just ten miles from Cote D’Azur. Marcel Breuer and Robert Gatje, the famed architects who created the LaGaude building adapted the design for Florida’s flat terrain and hot sun.
In August 1981, IBM launched a new product that put the city of Boca Raton on the map. A small engineering team led first by William Lowe and then by Philip “Don” Estridge, secretly developed a personal computer (code name “Acorn”) that was to be ready for market within one year. Under pressure to meet an incredibly tight deadline and with autonomy from management unprecedented in IBM history, a small team created a personal computer that became the standard for the PC industry. Rather than develop all the parts internally, the team, incorporating an “open architecture,” quickly pulled together existing resources from outside companies. Microsoft provided the operating system (DOS) and BASIC programming language; Intel the 8088 microprocessor chips; Tandon the disk drive; Zenith the power strips; SCI Systems the circuit board; and Epson the printer. The open architecture allowed for add-on components to the internal system. Also for the first time, IBM sold this product through outside sources; Sears, Roebuck, and Company and Computerland, were the official retailers for the PC.
The success of the IBM PC resulted in the rapid growth of IBM Boca Raton. Staff size grew to over 10,000 to keep pace with the demand for the PC. IBMers eagerly accepted positions at Boca Raton for, within IBM ranks, it had gained a reputation for being a place of exciting and revolutionary work.
IBM shrunk and the buildings are now the Boca Raton Innovation Campus (BRIC). I visited with a neighbor who is a car expert (senior engineer for a Big Three manufacturer) back in March for Cars and Coffee Palm Beach. What do the buildings look like today?
Practical advice: use the bathroom before you arrive because the BRIC landlords don’t open up the buildings and let people use the real restrooms, ask for donations, present the history of the PC, or show off what is being done today in their 1.7 million square feet of space. There is a McDonald’s within walking distance and, for the ladies, a Starbucks in a mall across the street. Also, bring your own coffee because the food and drink vendors usually had lines. Budget about 1.5 hours to see the 500+ cars and chat with some of the owners. Perhaps 2,000 people show up (it was free for spectators and $15 for those showing off their cars).
Northerners will appreciate this Kei car, which sported “Floridiots” bumper sticker and flag plus a Confederate flag on the front bumper:
The 1,064 hp Corvette ZR1 was almost impossible to get in March 2026, but there were two at the event.
If a real Chevrolet is too pedestrian, maybe you’d like to see this $1 million fake Ford (a GT that, instead of being made in the Islamic Republic of Michigan by Ford is made in the Islamic Republic of Canada by Multimatic, which also makes the fake Ford Mustang GT3 and GT4).
My favorite part of this 12 mpg machine is the “EcoBoost” logo on the engine (660 hp out of 3.5 liters of V6):
Maybe Chevrolet should slap an “Eco” label on the 12 mpg 670-hp Corvette Z06?
McLaren and Lamborghinis were everywhere, but we saw only a handful of Ferraris.
At the other end of the performance spectrum, a Volkswagen Rabbit GTI:
A replica (I think) Mercedes 300 SLR, complete with removable steering wheel (impossible to get in/out without removing it):
A Mercedes sedan converted to Tesla power:
(Maybe this will become much more common as old Teslas become more numerous and less valuable.)
Here’s a 1976 Pontiac that cost $6,746, which the BLS says is roughly $40,000 in today’s mini-dollars:
Maybe the closest modern equivalent is a Toyota Camry, which starts at about $32,000 including (an outrageous) destination charge?
Do you really need to drop a modern muscle car drivetrain into a motorcycle? Yes:
It’s a great event, but I think something more needs to be done to commemorate our best desktop friend!
(I like to do everything in the dumbest way imaginable so I held off on buying more SSD back in October 2025 when building my new desktop PC. I figured that I would be able to get 16 TB on an M.2 stick, rather than merely 8, and that the price would keep falling. Instead, the 8 TB Samsung 9100 that I did purchase has more than doubled in price and 16 TB limped into the market in March with a price of $16,000 (below).)
Polls are about to close in Wisconsin’s primary election. According to polls, Francesca Hong is the highest quality Democrat in the entire state. Will the election results confirm this anointment?
Democrats in Maine voted in overwhelming numbers for a man whose brain was found to be 100% non-functional by the VA (thus qualifying him for 100% disability; of course, democracy ultimately required that the person chosen by voters be disappeared by party elites). Democrats in Wisconsin are, if the polls are correct, voting for a person whose brain required treatment in a mental hospital (Wikipedia):
Hong lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her son. She works part-time as a bartender. She was previously married to Matt Morris, with whom she opened Morris Ramen. In a 2025 interview, Hong said that she experienced a mental health crisis at age 18, was hospitalized for a week, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
You can’t spit in the street in the U.S. anymore without hitting a college graduate and, yet, Wisconsin Democrats want their state to be ruled by someone who wasn’t able to complete college (and not because she was, like Michael Dell or Bill Gates, too busy with a successful startup) and who was diagnosed with a mental health condition that requires lifelong treatment (admittedly this could have been a misdiagnosis under our “often in error; never in doubt” health care system).
Separately, if she’s elected will she send the fearsome Wisconsin National Guard (which put on an amazing display of firepower, including artillery and aerial refueling of F-35s, at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) Airshows 2025) to destroy Israel and liberate Palestine from the river to the sea, as depicted on her shirt below?
Could Israel defend itself against the Wisconsin National Guard with Francesca Hong as its commander in chief? It seems like it would be tough to sneak a German-built submarine into Lake Michigan without someone noticing passage through various locks:
I would be excited for this gal to win the general election for two reasons: (1) Wisconsin is home to some billionaires who might move to Florida and increase our tax base (not income or estate, since we don’t have those, but property and sales tax), and (2) I would love to see her come to Oshkosh and mix with the EAA AirVenture crowd to learn just how bad “to[o] many old white people” can get:
(Democrats don’t want a governor who can distinguish between “to” and “too”?)
She might not like the night airshow finales… (the typical attendee will say that these are the biggest loudest fireworks displays he or she (not too many nonbinary) has ever experienced)
Note that the richest person in Wisconsin is Diane Hendricks, cofounder of ABC Supply in 1982 with her husband (who died in 2007). She’s worth over $20 billion, according to Forbes. (Just imagine how much she could have made if she’d hired naming consultants and then used “Turnip Blue” instead of “ABC Supply”.) She supposedly already has a house in Palm Beach so shifting tax residence would be as simple as extending her winters season.
Finally, speaking of progressive Democrat governance, it was Narcan Distribution Day in Cambridge, Maskachusetts (below). I hope that all of my friends still paying taxes up north got some “free” (not “taxpayer-funded”) “harm reduction materials”!
What are folks predicting regarding tomorrow’s official inflation number? My guess: 4% annual.
What’s the real rate? Let’s look at this Microplane cheese grater, a combination of U.S. and Mexican manufacturing. It was $12.95 in November 2014.
Adjusted to official CPI, it should be about $18.50 today. In fact, however, it had gone up to only $12.99 at the end of June when I decided to see how much sharpness these things lose after 12 years of abrasion in the dishwasher.
Does this prove Elon Musk at least partially correct? If everything can be done by machine then perhaps we won’t have epic inflation anymore. If we continue our addiction to population growth via immigration we could still host raging real estate inflation (“they’re not making any more land”), though even that could be ameliorated with construction robots (“they’re not making any more condos,” as my bond hedge fund manager friend likes to say in response to the classic line, which is certainly a great lesson for anyone investing in Florida (it can be tough to give away older condos right now, but single-family homes remain valuable and so do condos in new or new-ish buildings)). And maybe we could have inflation in food prices because food production is limited by how much damage we are willing to inflict on the environment, e.g., dumping fertilizer-rich water into the Gulf of America, which paradoxically, creates the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone.
On the bright side, Narcan is “free” (not “taxpayer-funded”) in Cambridge, Maskachusetts:
The Florida Democratic primary for Senate is on August 18. One baffling aspect: Alex Vindman not only moved to Florida during the tyranny of Ron DeSantis (in 2023), but now the foreign-born carpetbagger is trying to take away a Black woman’s job in the Senate primary. Vindman says that he has a 15-year-old daughter:
I'm running for Senate to lower your costs.
So that young people like my 15-year-old daughter can afford to build a life in Florida. So that people on fixed incomes like my 94-year-old dad can afford to stay here. pic.twitter.com/HaQqU95FRG
Why would a noble liberal migrant move to Florida? He talks, above, about a 15-year-old daughter. The goal is for this girl to stay in tax-free Florida for the rest of her life, thus denying the virtuous Democratic-ruled states of much-needed tax revenue. Said daughter can’t be safe in Florida because life-saving abortion care isn’t available after 6 weeks of a pregnant person’s pregnancy (Vindman is on record as a passionate supporter of abortion care). Because she’s under 18, life-saving gender-affirming care isn’t available. Vindman is literally killing his/her/zir/their daughter. State law won’t change to became safe even if the carpetbagger wins the Senate seat.
Most confusing, for a member of a party that champions the advancement of Americans identifying as “women” and the advancement of Americans identifying as “Black”, the apparently white male carpetbagger is trying to take away the important Senate job from a Black woman:
The number of leadership jobs in the U.S. is more or less constant (absolutely constant with respect to the number of senators). The only way for members of victimhood groups to advance is for white heterosexual males to retreat into subordinate roles. How can there reasonably be even a single white heterosexual cisgender male running for any office as a Democrat? And how could a virtuous Democrat reasonably make the decision, in 2023, to move to any Red State? (Vindman even moved an elderly parent to Florida, thus avoiding paying state estate tax and preserving the “generational wealth” that Democrats oppose.)
What was new for 2026? The entrance features just one person, “part of a Black riding community in Florida”:
An upstairs gallery had an exhibit limited to photos of “Black riders in New York”:
What’s interesting about the above centering of the Black experience on Harleys? I don’t remember seeing any Black visitors inside the museum ($26/person; median income for a Black-headed household in Milwaukee is about $37,000/year), but we heard tons of conversations in Spanish.
Photos of some parts of the museum not included in the 2024 post…
Biker chicks in the old days:
From roughly the same era:
Elvis Presley, one of my candidates for Greatest American Ever, purchased a Harley with the income from some of his earliest success:
This might have been the inspiration for New York Times coverage of various European vehicle ramming events: it is the “automobiles” doing the killing.
Early voting has begun for the Florida primary election. I’m registered as a Republican (can’t go back to the Party of Fauci!) and the choices are a little unsettling.
Choosing a governor would be easy if Ron DeSantis had endorsed someone, but the GOAT has kept quiet.
Let’s start with Paul Renner. He attended a liberal arts college, served in the Navy, and then went to University of Florida law school. He was Speaker of the House during part of the DeSantis administration. His campaign web site frankly is either the work of an insane person or, perhaps, a smart person who believes that everyone who reads it is stupid.
“Shift the tax burden to international real estate speculators”? How can that work in most of Florida’s 67 counties? International buyers are supposedly roughly 5% of the total dollar volume in Florida, but they’re heavily concentrated in a handful of counties.
Jay Collins is the current Lieutenant Governor, appointed about a year ago by Ron DeSantis when Jeanette Nuñez left to become head of Florida International University. He has a distinguished military career, including serving as a Green Beret. His campaign site is a little less insane. He wants to exempt a larger amount of homestead residents’ home value from property tax, which I think is a terrible idea (there is already a huge discrepancy between what long-term residents pay and what new arrivals or second-home owners pay because homesteads are taxed at their purchase price plus a maximum of 3% per year appreciation or CPI, whichever is less; DeSantis is at risk of losing his GOAT title, in my view, for trying to further derange Florida’s property tax system via a ballot question in November.).
This seems like a terrible idea for anyone who hates traffic jams:
Collins promises to lower insurance costs, but not by a specific percentage and mostly via the “tort reforms” (making it tougher to sue insurers and get all legal fees paid) that were enacted in 2022 and actually did bring down premiums:
Next we turn to Byron Donalds, currently in Congress representing some of the world’s richest people (Naples, Sanibel), which is ironic because Wikipedia says that he grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn under the care of “his single mother.” His issues page:
“Enact the Trump Agenda”? How is the governor of Florida going to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran?
“Make America Great Again”? That actually works against Florida’s interests. What helps Florida is when New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles fall apart and/or go into a Fauci-suggested lockdown. If the foregoing centers of American wealth were as nice as West Palm Beach and Sarasota, there would be no reason for rich people to move to Florida.
“taxpayer handouts to illegals”? Florida doesn’t do a lot in this area, I don’t think, other than pay for health care when the undocumented show up at emergency rooms (and how would we cut that off?). The real solution, though, would be to help the undocumented migrate onward to New York and Maskachusetts where they’re guaranteed a taxpayer-funded lifestyle. Donalds doesn’t seem to propose that.
“property insurance crisis”? Maybe we could lose another 10% on premiums if all disputes between homeowners and insurers were moved into a specialized and streamlined resolution system staffed by arbitrators who actually knew something about home construction and repair. Beyond that, though, how is it a “crisis” if rates are higher than in some other states because of hurricane risk? ChatGPT’s estimates of available juice to squeeze from the insurance lemon:
(Look how expensive agents are! Maybe this is an argument for socialism. If there were just one insurance company, run by the state, rates could come down by about 20% because there would be no agents and no underwriting profit! What could go wrong?)
I hate to say that the candidate endorsed by Donald Trump is the least insane of the above, but perhaps he is! Mostly, I’m saddened that the only way to win an election in the U.S. seems to be promising people free stuff, absurd stuff, and impossible stuff. Average IQ in the U.S. is falling, but maybe this isn’t a new phenomenon. After all, when Lyndon Johnson and Congress in the 1960s decided to simultaneously expand the welfare state (Medicaid, Medicare, public housing, food stamps) open the borders (Hart-Celler), that was implicitly a promise that the U.S. would be infinitely rich forever. When FDR and Congress set up Social Security in the 1930s and paid the first beneficiary 1000X what she’d contributed via taxes that was tantamount to a “free lunch” promise.
The choice for Senate is much simpler. DeSantis-appointed fifth-generation Floridian Ashley Moody is the incumbent and everyone seems to like her. (Well, maybe the undocumented don’t like her because she’s in favor of border security and, when that fails, ICE. If she were in the Islamic Republic of Michigan running against Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed she’d probably try to deport him to Egypt.)
Wilton Simpson is running to retain his job as Agriculture Commissioner. I won’t be voting for his opponent, Matt Taylor, because he styles himself “Matt the Welder” and that reminds me of “Graham Platner the Oyster Farmer.” Also, Matt the Welder is opposed to “government aerial mosquito spraying”, according to ChatGPT. One of the great things about our life in Florida has been that we’ve cut our DEET use by 90% compared to when we lived in the Boston suburbs (tick-infested 7 months per year and horrific mosquitos for 3-4 months per year). If Palm Beach County wants to use an Airbus A380 filled with whatever kills mosquitos I am all for it! (see Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Mosquito for a recommendation of a great book on how horrible this insect is; see also Kill them all (mosquitoes) with genetic engineering and let God sort out the mutant survivors) Note that ChatGPT might be hallucinating/lying. Taylor seems to be hostile to herbicides and perhaps some of his supporters assume that he will also be hostile to insecticides. Regardless, “welder” is too close to “oyster farmer” for comfort, unless of course one is a progressive female looking for some action…
There’s also a race for a judge. Schnelle Tonge v. Jacob Noble. Ms. Tonge is endorsed by a lot of Palm Beach County officials while Mr. Noble is endorsed by the police. Noble seems to have a lot more litigation experience, e.g., he’s admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appeals court, and three federal district courts.
Update: I biked over to Florida Atlantic University’s Jupiter (Abacoa) campus and voted early. There was a substantial staff and nobody in line. I was offered the opportunity to use the voting machine, which ultimately prints a paper ballot, in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole. It seems that, in our infinite political wisdom, we’ve created a huge class of eligible voters (U.S. citizens) who can’t understand the most basic English. ChatGPT explains that someone might be a birthright citizen and never learn English due to being taken back to Haiti or wherever as a baby. The anchor baby returns at age 18, let’s suppose, and decides to vote. We also hand out citizenship to people who are over 50 without requiring them to pass the English test that is normally required for naturalization. Finally, unlike Australia, which bars the entry of the disabled as likely to become a burden on their overstressed health care system, “a qualifying physical or developmental disability or mental impairment can exempt a naturalization applicant from the English requirement.”
Once we’ve filled the United States with citizens who don’t speak English, a federal law requires that we facilitate votes from those completely-disconnected-from-legacy-Americans-by-language citizens. The Voting Rights Act, Section 203:
… citizens of language minorities have been effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process. Among other factors, the denial of the right to vote of such minority group citizens is ordinarily directly related to the unequal educational opportunities afforded them resulting in high illiteracy and low voting participation.
The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act require that when a covered state or political subdivision provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language.
The requirements of the law are straightforward: all election information that is available in English must also be available in the minority language so that all citizens will have an effective opportunity to register, learn the details of the elections, and cast a free and effective ballot.
There is some discrimination, according to the Justice Department!
Covered language minorities are limited to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Spanish-heritage citizens – the groups that Congress found to have faced barriers in the political process.
Why not Arabic for the noble enrichers of Dearborn, Michigan who’ve brought their parents over? “Chinese” is the second-largest non-English language spoken at home after Spanish (Census), but no provisions are made to facilitate voting by immigrants from China or Chinese anchor babies who’ve recently shown up as adults.
It surprises me that the U.S. hasn’t completely melted down. The lowest-earning 50 percent of eligible voters pay 3 percent of federal income tax (i.e., they receive a 97 percent discount on the federal government services that they can vote to receive; it would make sense for them to vote for a daily federal government delivery of popcorn even if they think they’ll eat it just once per month). We make huge efforts to gather votes from people who aren’t able to speak English, who have a “mental impairment” (I guess that’s consistent with the 100% disabled Graham Platner almost being elected Senator), and who may have lived in the U.S. for only a few months (the anchor-baby-returns-to-birthplace scenario)), and who aren’t interested enough in or informed enough about voting to zip over to the polls (sending out vote-by-mail packages to everyone).
